Solamere, Tagg Romney, and the New American Normal

The problem with crony capitalism isn't the capitalism, it's the cronies.

The cronies take the capitalism out of crony capitalism, which is why it can flourish under ostensibly Communist systems, like China or the old Soviet Union, as well as it can flourish here. The cronies limit your vision. They cosset you against the world. They help you avoid the downturns and vicissitudes to which all of us fall heir. They can give you a false sense of how smart you are and, in turn, how much wealth and success are things that are yours by right, rather than things that you earn. They can turn you into George W. Bush. This is in no way a good thing.

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Comes now Tagg Romney, Financial Wizard. With a little help from Daddy's friends. For all the Romney palaver about the way the family has scrapped its way into the top 1 percent, it's a long way from that cabin in Mexico. This is the world which the Romneys inhabit now — the world of starter trust-funds of $100 million, the world in which $244 million in investments comes from a simple handshake over dinner at Torrey Pines, money enough to buy you a lot of fine alibis when questions arise about the benefits of being in business with the son of a possible president of the United States. It's scary:

Solamere's founders dispute any notion that they have cashed in on their political connections, arguing that Solamere, like any fund, has had to persuade investors on its merits. "No one we went to as an investor said, 'Oh, your dad is Mitt Romney, I'm going to give you $10 million," Tagg Romney said, noting that his father's political future was uncertain when the firm began. He added, "Our relationships with people got us in the door, but that did not get us investors."

Does he think that anyone needed to mention who his father was? That's the kind of thing that's understood in this world, the kind of thing that is not spoken about, because it's gauche to mention and because everyone knows what's reallt going on. Solamere was raising money in the middle of the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, one that was caused by thievery and brigandage that took place within the very industry in which Solamere was trying to establish itself. Does anyone with the analytical skills of a handball believe that the investors were charmed into handing over $300 million to a rookie and that who the rookie's father was — and who the rookie's father might turn out to be — didn't matter at all? Particularly since a lot of them had invested heavily in the possibility of making the rookie's father what the rookie's father wanted to be? Not even the class of people who wrecked the economy are that arrogant and/or stupid.

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This is the kind of thinking that has been normalized in this country — that private deals carving up the national wealth are the way the system is supposed to operate, that the secret handshakes and the private codes are the way to divvy up the national wealth, the discreet dinners a deux or a huit are the arenas within the business of the nation must be conducted, lest the whole system fail, while the rest of us look at it from the outside and wonder how things could have gone so terribly wrong.

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